Haunt You (Like a Ghost)
by Oceanbreeze7
Summary: Oneshot due to high request: Heavy Angst. "I went to a Summer camp, I don't think you know what that's like."Tony hummed, kicking once again and inching closer to the dirty edge. "You weren't missing out. It was somewhere in Indiana, Broad Ripple or something like that. It was an excuse for my old dad to kick me out." Loki's lip twitched slightly, "I know what that one is like."


**Every once in a while I try to write a 'Get the fans to cry' story. Although this is short, I just rattled this out in under half an hour and wanted to share.**

 **I guess It was time I make one again- although this one is actually a song fic amazingly enough. Instead of posting the lyrics in after each paragraph, they have been altered slightly so that they're actually dialogue.**

 **The song that inspired this angst filled madness is Broad Ripple is Burning by** ** _Margot and the Nuclear So and So's._**

 **Be aware that this is very angsty.**

* * *

"I went to a summer camp," Tony offered, sitting with his legs overhanging the edge of the rooftop.

His jeans were already encrusted with grime and now whatever sludge he had sat in, oblivious to the filth around him.

"I don't think you know what that's like," Tony continued absentmindedly, swinging one leg over the edge way above the street far below. The streetlights were busted or flickering weakly.

"No," Loki spoke, hunched over while sitting and looking out over the ghetto buildings anyways, "I don't."

Tony hummed, kicking once again and inching closer to the dirty edge. "You weren't missing out. It was somewhere in Indiana, Broad Ripple or something like that. It was an excuse for my old dad to kick me out."

Loki's lip twitched slightly, "I know what that one is like."

"Everyone was sick," Tony spoke, kicking small chunks of hardened bird feces over the edge. His arms were spread like wings, grasping the air and keeping him teetering on the edge.

"The girls were always off doing whatever. Huffing glue or sharing needles or whatever rich girls do out of sight. The boyfriends were worse, they'd camp out right outside the doors and flirt with anyone who walked in or out. Hoping to get lucky."

"Did they?" Loki asked, the hood of his busted sweatshirt hanging low over his face, casting shadows over his hollowed cheeks.

A siren echoed quietly in the night, a shrill cry of panic and fear in a place where everyone had already lost hope.

"Yeah," Tony breathed quietly, "They did."

Loki nodded, shivering slightly in the cold.

"Everything was always burning," Tony offered quietly. Another wind sent him twisting, adjusting on the edge of sudden death with only his scarred arms for support.

The siren faded out.

* * *

"What was it like for you?"

Loki shrugged, his painfully thin body trembling against the cold. "Large. Empty. Lost."

Tony nodded slowly, eyes dull. A streetlight was stuck on blinking orange, the color sapped out all of the warmth on his face.

"I heard them whispering," Loki continued, gazing off over Tony's shoulder although not at anything, "Day or night around mother's fountains."

"Yeah," Tony sighed, "Me too. Although it was more trash filled streets than elaborate fountains."

Loki's eyes sharpened slightly, "Shouldn't you be heading home?"

Tony didn't respond.

* * *

"There were women my dad would bring home," Tony spoke, shuffling to avoid a puddle of something suspicious on the ground, "Never upstairs. He'd sneak them in the basement where we stashed all the sleeping bags. He was always drunk."

Loki smiled thinly, the scars around his lips and below his eye looked painful in the light, "Everything I have ever loved has turned to stone, Stark. Why are you prattling on?" Loki tried to laugh, the sound was fractured and chipping like broken cups in a china cabinet.

"Pack your bags, come back with me." Tony offered suddenly, "Come back home with me."

Loki laughed, the sound cutting even with the sobbing edge to it, hysterical around the edges like a fraying ribbon. "Oh Stark. Don't waste your time with me."

Tony had an expression, a glimmer of understanding in his eyes which made Loki want to-

"Don't _look_ at me that way." Loki hissed, bristling under the sweatshirt.

"If I don't," Tony paused, "I feel like you'll be finding a rope."

Loki's lips curled sharply and painfully, the scars glinting under the flickering streetlight, "Then I'll tell Hela to release me to haunt you."

"Like a ghost?" Tony smiled with the expression of a deadman.

Loki didn't respond.

* * *

"You said everyone you loved was gone," Tony spoke softly, in contrast to the rattling bang of opossums in the trash cans, "Who was she?"

"Freya," Loki spoke softly, "She was fire, so fierce and untamed."

"What happened to her?" Tony asked quietly, glancing up briefly to peer at the stars through the smog of the sky.

"She burned out before I awoke." Loki whispered, hands clenching and unfurling leaving small crescents in his palm.

Tony silently wondered if they were the same shape as the moon, hidden from sight through pollution and smoke.

"I find it hard to believe you have none to speak of," Loki spoke quietly, hands crammed in his pockets, "A famous mortal such as yourself."

"You mean Pepper," Tony chuckled bitterly, "I wondered the same. She was there, then she wasn't"

Loki kicked a dented tin can, sending it flying towards a cat creeping at them from an alley.

"And she's replaced with pints of whiskey and cigarettes and-" Tony shakily rose one hand, tapping the side of his head spasmodically, "Dreams of outer space."

"And then someone moves," Tony seethed, hunkering forward, "And this illusion that everything is already is just- it just _cracks._ And you just _know_ that everything you thought you had has gone to shit-"

"You've got a lot," Loki interjected, eyes sliding to Tony, glimmering dull green like a faded painting, "Don't forget that."

* * *

"I wrote letters on an airplane," Tony started quietly, "When people looked like ants."

"It's hard to do that," Loki growled under his voice, lacking bite and instead only laying on exhaustion, "When the woman you love is fighting Valkyries."

"Not those kind of letters," Tony breathed softly, "It was hard not to- when every time you moved everything you thought you had would- _will,_ go to shit."

Loki wisely didn't say anything.

"You may not really think it, Lok's." Tony muttered, "But you've got a lot too. Don't you _dare_ forget that."

* * *

"Are you going back?"

Tony snorted, "No. If I do I'll be so wasted you could taste it a mile away."

Loki exhaled with a prominent rattle, looking at Tony with a knowing expression.

"Oh _stop,"_ Tony hissed sourly, "You're not- you're not allowed to look at me that way now-"

"Should I be searching your residence for a rope, Stark?" Loki laughed, the sound on the very edge of crying once again, "Shall I lower you from where you hang?"

Tony stared, jaw trembling in the flickering lights, "I'll haunt _your_ ass like the worst ghost."

* * *

 _And I'm wasted._

 _You can taste it._

 _Don't look at me that way._

' _Cause I'll be hanging from a rope._

 _I will haunt you like a ghost._


End file.
